Review: The Creative License: Giving Yourself Permission to Be The Artist You Truly Are

The Creative License: Giving Yourself Permission to Be The Artist You Truly Are by Danny Gregory
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Celebrate creativity!

This book is sketchy. It seems like all of Danny Gregory's art is sketchy. But wow, what a creative guy he is!!

Danny Gregory is a great, wonderful, talented sketchbook artist who encourages us not to let a lack of artistic talent stop us from having fun with art-making. One has to start somewhere. And seriously, one has to start over every day and keep sketching in order to get good at sketching things. It is fun. I recommend it.

The book has a handwriting-type font that I found difficult to read at length, but for short jaunts through his prose it wasn't too bad. The pages generally don't flow together anyway. The book is full of short bursts of inspiration. When you turn the page, some other inspiration appears along with bright, colorful, sketchy pictures that are a delight to look at.

This book is just plain fun. Every page is some kind of fun. There's no plot. It is all just inspirational thoughts of interest, probably, to artists.

That said I want to give special attention to two page-spreads near the end of the book. Pages 160-161 are titled "The Art of the Cinema" and they contain his brief reviews of 31 movies about artists. This will provide me with a convenient list of movies I absolutely have to see. I'm so grateful.

The other page-spread that really excited me was on pages 190-191, "Chillin' With Dylan." There Danny Gregory reviews and enthuses at length Bob Dylan's memoir, Chronicles, Vol. 1, a book I was mesmerized and amazed by. What an amazing writing style Bob Dylan has! I was so surprised and happy when I saw that Danny liked that book as much as I did!

Well, if you're interested in art, sketching, creativity and unique literary presentations, this book, Creative License, is one you might like to check out. I recommend it.

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